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Affiliated Societies

Affiliated Societies, September 2001

AHA Staff, September 2001

CCWH Announces Prelinger Scholarship Competition

The Coordinating Council for Women in History will accept applications until February 2, 2002 for its fifth CCWH Catherine Prelinger Award Scholarship of $10,000. The award, named after a former CCWH president, is intended to to support the work of a scholar whose academic career has not followed the traditional path of uninterrupted study and work. Funded by a gift from an anonymous donor, the award is aimed at enhancing the work of the CCWH, committed to encouraging women in the historical profession.

Applicants must be members of the CCWH and must hold either the PhD or ABD status at the time of application. They should be actively engaged in research that is historical in nature, but the degree may be in related fields. They must show evidence of a nontraditional professional career and describe a project that will further enhance women's roles in history. Details about the scholarship program can be obtained from Marguerite Renner, Department of History, Glendale College, 1500 North Verdugo Road, Glendale, CA 91208.

Oral History Association Calls for Papers

The Oral History Association invites proposals for papers (to be postmarked by November 30, 2001) for its 2002 annual meeting to be held October 23–27, 2002 in San Diego, California. The theme of the meeting is "Global Linkages: The Internationalization of Everyday Life." Presentations on oral history projects that investigate the relationships between regional cultures and economies and the larger processes of globalization, are invited. The association will welcome proposals not only from historians but also from anthropologists, sociologists, and other scholars who use qualitative interviews in their research.

Details about the annual meeting and submission of proposals can be obtained from the OHA web site at www.dickinson.edu/oha/.

WHA Presents Book Awards

Jerry Bentley, editor of the Journal of World History, presented this year's World History Association book prizes to co-winners Ken Pomeranz and John McNeill at the president's banquet during the 10th annual international conference of the WHA in Salt Lake City June 28–July 1, 2001. The competition was the stiffest yet, so the WHA Book Award Committee opted, for the first time, to honor two outstanding contributions to world history. Jurors gave these two books consistently high marks, using words like "brilliant," "superb," "tour de force," and "a classic."

Pomeranz's book, TheGreat Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000) was long-awaited, as his ideas had been discussed in multiple conference panels. Expanding on the attacks on Eurocentrism in the works of Bin Wong and Gunder Frank (the 1999 WHA award winner, for his Re-Orient), Pomeranz attributes European economic take-off less to a home-grown "miracle" that to rescue from an ecological crisis by American windfalls and available coal. One juror called the Great Divergence "one of the most sophisticated and significant pieces of cliometric scholarship to be published of late, especially in the field of world history." Another said the book "shows that, at least in the field of early modern economy, world history is lively at both an empirical and theoretical level."

McNeill's Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Norton, 2000) argues that human impact on the earth was greatest in the 1900s, as people used more energy than they had in the previous 10,000 years. Wealthy countries used as much as 100 times more energy per capita than poor countries did, and air pollution has now killed almost as many people as the two world wars. One juror said, "This important book has the great advantage of being very readable.... He leaves out nothing that I consider important, while filling each page with a wealth of fascinating detail and witty remarks." Another wrote, "the book could almost stand on its own as a text for courses in world environmental history. It certainly reads well enough to be understood and enjoyed by a very wide readership."

Both books show that economic development has its price, and that the industrial economy is fast reaching, once again, the ecological "limits of the possible," as Fernand Braudel might say. Another revolution is needed, but territorial expansion overseas is no longer an option, and not even subcontracting can escape a finite future. The WHA Book Award Committee is pleased to honor two such important works of "history from a global perspective" that also provoke us to think about the present and the future.

Nominations are still open until November for a book published in late 2000 or 2001 for the 2002 WHA Book Award. Please contact David Chappell, WHA Book Award Committee chair, at dchappel@hawaii.edu.

CAMP Calls for Papers, Offers Grants to Students

The Council on America's Military Past calls for paper proposals (to be submitted by February 15, 2002) for presentation at its 36th annual military history conference to be held July 10–14, 2002 at the Wyndham Old San Juan Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The focus of the conference will be on U.S. military activities in the Caribbean from the earliest times through the American Revolution, Civil War, the Spanish- American War, the World Wars, up to and including the Cold War and the confrontation with Cuba. Visits to the military history sites will be a special feature of the conference.

The council also invites applications for the Robert E. Young/ Merrill C. Windsor Awards from students who are interested in attending the conference. Any full-time student (elementary school through graduate school) can apply and CAMP membership is not required. The grants will defray conference costs (excluding lodging, transportation, and nonconference meals). A stipend of $300 per winner will be available. Applicants should send a brief (one typed page) note on why they want to attend the conference to the CAMP address given below.